As the street becomes disassembled to its component parts and modes are split, lower-budget striping is often the preferred definitional boundary for automobile, bicycle and pedestrian.
Consequently, discussion and debate often ensues around alternatives to the “great American stripe”.
We begin with the international contrast of “the flower line” and move on to variations anew.
Increasingly, everyday seems like “a day of the street”.
Today, as part of a feature series on recent mayoral “state of the city” speeches, Planner’s Web highlights Minneapolis, where in his address last month Mayor R.T. Rybak stressed that city’s “Great Streets” program, a coordinated funding assistance effort to ensure success of businesses located adjacent to commercial corridors and nodes.
Coincidentally, in Seattle, a broad campaign (citing, inter alia, Minneapolis) launched, with the goal of offsetting comprehensive funding shortfalls for Seattle street reinvention:
We believe that walking, bicycling and transit should be the easiest means of transportation in Seattle. But our current situation is that we face cuts in Metro service hours and we’re not funding the Bicycle and Pedestrian Master Plans that are needed for our future.
Our coalition has identified a number of potential funding sources – to the tune of $30 million dollars – for walking, biking and transit infrastructure. And we look forward to working with the Seattle City Council, Mayor McGinn and our partners to create dedicated funding mechanisms for multi-modal transportation initiatives in Seattle.
We also look forward to engaging the entire city of Seattle in a conversation about how we fund and build the pedestrian, bicycle and transit infrastructure that aligns with our vision; this year, and into the future.
Here is an embedded link to the new coalition effort, which, at last review, garnered 267 Facebook fans in just over 24 hours:
Are America’s small resort towns evidence of a growing sustainability ethic, where, inter alia, autocentric streets are in transition from past to future? Based on selective photography, today’s landscape in Chelan, Washington suggests such a conclusion.
Five days prior to Earth Day, 2010, five indicators emerge, as captioned below:
1. Small town streets, while auto-dominated, interact with a growing pedestrian presence.
2. Businesses are seeking street interaction wherever possible, even while conventional parking schemes remain.
3. The juncture of parks and natural resources enhances town settings.
4. Street and park fairs celebrate Earth Day.
5. Local groups organize around sustainability amid the monikers of conventional infrastructure and transportation.
A review of the Lake Chelan Mirror (April 14 print edition) shows the City Council addressing balanced street uses and potential incentives for sustainability in discussion of the Draft Downtown Master Plan. Simultaneously, the Council is discussing balanced integration of a potential 270 acre mixed use development adjacent to current city limits.
As the future of the automobile is roundly debated amid increasing discussion of pedestrian, bicycle and transit environments, images remind us of the changing nature of the street.
Last month, we illustrated some potential “quick wins” for placemaking, gleaned from a morning walk. Here are some additional, “scaled” lessons learned through observations of an historic urban park network partially restored by neighbors, in cooperation with a big city park department.
Local action supplements big ideas through demonstrable implementation. Seattle’s Madrona Woods story, accessible here, shows us how and why.
1. City woods, then (1909) and now (2010):
2. Stairways along the way, public and private:
3. New pedestrian bridge, restored lake shore:
4. The prize of the daylighted creek:
